Good Morning!!

Listening to that gun violence hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday was truly mind blowing. It’s very difficult for me to understand how someone like Crazy Wayne LaPierre or Gayle “Guns Keep Women Safe” Trotter can actually be permitted to testify before Congress. It was also mind-blowing to hear these people (Senators and pro-gun advocates) attacking “the mentally ill” and video games, yet no experts on mental illness or the effects of video games were invited to testify.

My mind was so blown by what I saw and heard yesterday that I have been unable to think of much other than gun violence and the refusal of our “leaders” to do anything about it. So this will be a gun-oriented post. First some information about the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The biggest recipient of the NRA’s money is one of the committee’s newest members: freshman Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who got a $344,742 boost in independent expenditures from the NRA during his race against former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. According to Public Campaign’s figures, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has received $136,639 from the NRA, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, has received $78,526. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is the only Democrat on the committee who has received an NRA donation. Leahy’s Green Mountain PAC has received $7,000.

The Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee did not endorse colleague Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban at a packed Capitol Hill hearing on guns Wednesday in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., called for “common sense reform,” that closes loopholes in current gun laws and enforces background checks. Buthe did not endorse Feinstein’s tougher ban. “I know gun store owners in Vermont,” Leahy said. “They follow the law and conduct background checks…why should we not try to plug the loopholes in the law that allow (criminals and the mentally ill) to buy guns without background checks?”

The rebuffed California Democrat plans to hold her own hearing in her Judiciary subcommittee on her legislation, which is strongly opposed by the National Rifle Association. Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has also refused to back a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity clips. Reid’s position reflects the political fact that a whole bevy of conservative Democrats do not support Feinstein’s ban.

* At least 7 of 18 committee members own guns (7 committee member refused to answer the question)
* Senator Leahy was champion marksman in college
* Senator Sessions has about a dozen firearms

And guess what Lindsey Graham has in his closet with him?

“I have an AR-15 at home and I haven’t hurt anybody and I don’t intend to do it,” Graham declared on Wednesday at a Judiciary Committee hearing.

We’re all relieved to hear that, Senator.

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander isn’t on the Judiciary Committee, but he has an opinion on the gun issue. He thinks that video games are “a bigger problem than guns.” Jason Linkins (HuffPo) looked into that claim and provides lots of links to research. The gist is that there isn’t a clear link between video games and aggressive behavior.

On the other hand, there is quite a bit of evidence that video game have positive effects on the brain. There is an article about it in the latest issue of Scientific American. It’s behind a paywall, but you can read the preview. Research shows that the games that have the most powerful cognitive effects are the violent first-person shooter games.

A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception. The specific benefits are wide ranging, from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability.

People who played action-based video and computer games made decisions 25% faster than others without sacrificing accuracy, according to a study. Indeed, the most adept gamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second—four times faster than most people, other researchers found. Moreover, practiced game players can pay attention to more than six things at once without getting confused, compared with the four that someone can normally keep in mind, said University of Rochester researchers. The studies were conducted independently of the companies that sell video and computer games.

Scientists also found that women—who make up about 42% of computer and videogame players—were better able to mentally manipulate 3D objects, a skill at which men are generally more adept. Most studies looked at adults rather than children.

There can be negative cognitive effects too, of course, but they don’t relate to aggression.

Electronic gameplay has its downside. Brain scans show that violent videogames can alter brain function in healthy young men after just a week of play, depressing activity among regions associated with emotional control, researchers at Indiana University recently reported. Other studies have found an association between compulsive gaming and being overweight, introverted and prone to depression. The studies didn’t compare the benefits of gaming with such downsides.

Of course Republicans (and quite a few Democrats) are impervious to facts, so we can pretty much assume that none of this actual research will affect what they do about gun violence.

Now a couple of think pieces.

Early this month, famed professional atheism advocate and muslim-hater Sam Harris wrote about why gun control is a very bad thing. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, since Harris is definitely not a liberal. After all, he supports torture and ethnic profiling. I won’t excerpt from it, because it’s so long and besides, Harris is a bore as well as a boor.

I am pretty sure I can predict the outcome of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on guns today. Reason will not prevail. Nowhere in America is anyone proposing a serious ban on weapons, yet gun lovers squeal in hysterical fear and frighten everyone else. It must be a form of Infantile Castration Anxiety. “Please don’t take my ickle shooter, daddy.” How else can you explain this overreaction to a public health problem that’s been solved in so many other places? Looked at rationally, even the most stringent gun proposals barely qualify as circumcision let alone the full snip (or the Big G as they call it in the gelding fraternity). No, this is an irrational fear, and unless it is understood as such, men and boys will keep on shooting people.

Never mind the disturbing Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, even intellectual heroes of mine have overreacted adversely to the mild gun-control proposals skulking about the halls of power waiting to get their heads blown off. Among the many articles about gun control is one by the brilliant Sam Harris.

When I started reading it and realized he was essentially pro-gun, I pushed on with the apprehension you always feel when faced with the prospect of having to change your mind. I’ve read all Sam’s books, heard him speak, and met him. He is one of the most intellectually impressive people I’ve ever encountered. If anyone could persuade me that widespread gun ownership is a good thing, it would be him. To my astonishment, he had become Wayne LaPierre on IQ steroids with the paranoia dialed down. Even Harris’s great brain: shrunk by terror!

That’s just the introductory paragraphs. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

A couple of updates on gun-related news items from yesterday:

The gunman, reported to be a 65-year-old retired truck driver, was known around the neighborhood as a menacing figure who once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for setting foot on his property and patrolled his yard at night with a flashlight and a shotgun.

He had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump.

The standoff along a red dirt road began on Tuesday afternoon, after a gunman boarded a stopped school bus filled with children in the small town of Midland City, population 2,300. Sheriff Wally Olson said the man shot the bus driver when he refused to hand over a 6-year-old child. The gunman then took the kindergartener away.

This is definitely a guy who shouldn’t have a gun, but he got one. As of last night, the boy was said to be okay. One neighborhood couple said that the suspect is very paranoid and freaks out if people’s pets or children go into his yard and that everyone tries to avoid him.

Another neighbor, Ronda Wilbur, said the suspect beat her 120-pound dog with a lead pipe for coming onto his side of the dirt road. The dog died a week later.

“He said his only regret was he didn’t beat him to death all the way,” Wilbur said. She called animal control, who came out and talked to the suspect, but nothing else happened. “If a man can kill a dog, and beat it with a lead pipe and brag about it, it’s nothing until it’s going to be people.”

Steven D. Singer, 48, was the CEO of Fusion Contact Centers, a Scottsdale company that provides its clients with technical support, billing, and other services. Singer, whose company is involved in litigation with a man police have identified as a “person of interest” in the shooting, had been attending a mediation session at a law firm within a Phoenix office complex….

One of the surviving victims, Mark Hummel, 43, was reportedly shot in the head and the neck after walking out of the mediation. Hummel, a former government reporter with a Santa Fe, New Mexico, newspaper, specializes in business disputes, real-estate litigation, and legal malpractice defense, and is president of the Phoenix chapter of the Federal Bar Association….according to a lawsuit filed in Maricopa County, Hummel represented Fusion Contact Centers in its 2012 litigation with Harmon, a furniture refurbisher. The lawsuit centered around Harmon’s claim that he was a “victim of a scam” that “hurt and injured his health and strength” and caused “severe shock to his nervous system and person” resulting in ongoing “mental and physical nervous pain and suffering.”

In court papers, Fusion claimed it contracted with Harmon early last year to dismantle, refurbish, and reinstall furniture in a California call center. Fusion paid Harmon over $29,000 in advance, but when Harmon inspected the furniture he claimed it could not be refurbished. Fusion cancelled the deal, but by that time Harmon had moved the furniture to Arizona and was paying storage on what he called “two hundred and six worthless work stations.”

Fusion told Harmon to sell the furniture. Harmon said it wasn’t worth anything. Then Harmon sued Fusion for lost wages, damages, and storage fees. Fusion countersued for breach of contract and damages, claiming Harmon destroyed internal cables in the call center when he dismantled the furniture.

The case was sent to arbitration, and a hearing was scheduled for Jan. 30 at 9:30 a.m., the same day as the shooting.

Mrs. E. Roosevelt never heard me shoot my gun
Mrs. E. Roosevelt didn’t even know I owned one
Somewhere between the cobblestone floor and the slated wooden ceiling
Cuddling my semi-automatic, with a very fuzzy feeling
Ohh, there’s nothing like emptying a cartridge at the sun

Oh, we’re born alone and we’re covered by m-m-m-mother’s kisses
The mind has already forgotten what the body still misses
Somewhere between the sticky floor and the cracks in the ceiling
Cuddling my semi-automatic, what a very fuzzy feeling
Ohh, there’s nothing like emptying a cartridge at the sun

Thank you Ann ! But now i cant commenT quick on quixpte’s creepy but great post. I’ll just have to wait until I can get my laptop back in order this weekend. I’m stuck on my iPhone with bad 3G and no wifi

the youtube didn’t embed, let me try from my laptop … this song/youtube basically sums up how i feel about the rash of gun madness (both the shootings and the NRA’s commentary) that are going on right now.

Even though 7 or the committee members own handguns I don’t know a good reason why they wouldn’t support the measures that Feinstein proposes in her Bill. A magazine or a drum isn’t used for hunting (unless you’re hunting something that can return fire) and the aren’t necessary for target shooting. No one should have a problem with Universal Background checks. No one should have a problem with restrictions to reign in straw purchasers. No one should have a problem with the list of banned weapons because they’re all assault weapons, not to mention that even the restricted firearms are grandfathered in if purchased before the ban. That should be a huge boon to the assault weapons business.

To my mind everything Feinstein proposes is common sense. Here is her proposal

There isn’t a “good” reason unless you call money from the NRA a good reason. I’m really disappointed in Leahy–and Reid too. There could be more gun owners on the committee as well. Seven of them refused to answer the question.

Speaking from the perspective of a gun owner, I have ZERO problems with the Feinstein proposal. I don’t own any semi-automatic weapons, but even if I did, I know enough about firearms to understand the risk associated with those weapons and their high capacity ammunition magazines in the hands of an Adam Lanza.

I have had some heated arguments with a son-in-law who collects that sort of weapon over why he feels he needs to own them. He doesn’t hunt with them and he isn’t into target shooting. I sarcastically ask him if he needs assault weapons, the why doesn’t he need a Rocket propelled grenade or a shoulder mounted Rocket launcher? He has no answer, except that it’s his “right”. I’ve asked him if it would save the life of innocent children would he give them up, his answer is no. You cannot reason with these people

I had to turn the hearings off yesterday: everyone offering different scenarios with no end in sight. One hypothetical after another and no one was budging from their position which tells me that whatever gets passed will be insignificant in the long run.

You can get in trouble for smoking in undesignated areas, parking in a handicapped zone without permission, jaywalking, or throwing trash out the window of a car but owning a military weapon with enough rounds to take out multiple victims? No problem! Buy as many as you like! It’s what the Founding Fathers had in mind all along.

Sandy Hook meant nothing. Neither does any of the mass shootings that have taken place.

The lunatics are in charge armed with twisted logic that calls for teachers to be armed in the classroom. It is impossible to put a premium on this insanity.

Pat, they refuse to look back on Sandy Hook, because they know it will happen again (and they are encouraging it by allowing the ownership of assault weapons. The other day I listened to Neil Heslin, actually listened to him several times. He was describing his little boy, and what it was like to have him destroyed and his family destroyed and his little boy’s school totally destroyed and empty of children. He described the guns, and he was referring to the school, the community being a “WAR ZONE”, though he didn’t say it, that is what it was. Sandy Hook War Zone, Newtown, Ct. He talked about Adam’s machine gunning in the War Zone, and he talked about the slaughter of many little children, and adults. And that is what it was a “slaughter” with the machine gunning them down. He didn’t say it, but I thought, yes I
could 8 or 9 shots in those little bodies, how many did they take before they actually died? He didn’t say, but I could hear those little bodies wailing, and wailing, till the end of their last breath…………….Did those in congress hear the undescribable wailing from the little children………….the first responders heard it from the parents, and the community. They will suffer from PTDS for the rest of their lives. Did they see the blood? No but the first responders did, and the parents did. I know I would want to see that blood, because that is my blood, that is the father’s blood. But congress didn’t see that, yet they are out to spill more blood, and will deny it.

Fanny – profound comment.
Seems rather interesting that these same people who repeatedly chose deferments to avoid service, who pounded the drums of war when GWB lied his way to war, whose sons and daughters have never served are so overwhelmingly in favor of letting the carnage of innocent children and young adults continue. Chickenhawks is too nice a term these days.

I’m not a cat person, so I don’t understand all the hand wringing about cats killing other creatures. That’s who they are. That’s what they do. My parents lived on farms when they were younger and they said every farmer had two or three cats who lived in their barns and killed off the rodents. Of course, the farmers didn’t consider them pets, just a necessary part of farming. I guess that’s why I don’t have a cat as a pet because I was raised to think of them as tools more than pets.

Not all cats are predatory. Ones who live in a good home and given enough food do not kill. That’s why cats on farms are not fed. I’ve seen one of our cats(who would attack large dogs) two feet from a bird and not at all inclined to attack. Same with small lizards.

My old fat cat Miles could care less about whatever crawls around. Dinah, however, lives up to the Diana image of huntress. I’ve wrestled small gekkos from her even after she’s been fed. She just loves to play with them and the palmetto bugs that are all over here. I’m not very buddhist about the palmetto bugs. I tend not to rescue them but most of the time they’re way past rescuing. She just loves to play with anything that moves.

Late to the party – this so-called new study is BULL SHIT, complete & utter bullshit. I’m planning to post on my blog this weekend to discuss this & the hive mind mentality of scientists (primarily ornithologists) about the perceived danger of Killer Cats.

Google Peter Marra & then click on the links to Vox Felina if you’re interested in reading more about what an idiot Peter Marra is when it comes to cats. Marra was the lead on this study, which is simply a compilation of several old, flawed studies about cat predation.

I particularly liked Hagel’s descripition of Iraq as “a war of choice”. McCain was outraged because he knows history will remember him as a major advocate of the LIE that cost us blood and treasure. McCain needs to retire, he’s become a total angry, jealous, malicious, vindictive old man.

McCain is still pissed that he didn’t win in 2008. He couldn’t stand the thought of Susan Rice at SOS, because he didn’t see her as worthy. With Hagel he can’t stand sitting across from someone who challenged him on the Iraq war and is now on the verge of becoming SOD, arguably the 2nd or 3rd most powerful job in the world. McCain is so jealous he can’t hide his contempt because he thinks he is superior to Hagel. McCain sees himself as to good to be a Senator, even though Americans didn’t. He needs to go sulk in private, I’m sick of seeing & hearing his spiteful BS.

Not ever. I consider SkyD my blogfamily even when I’m MIA in the comments. just had a lot of personal stuff the last few months especially that kept me silent. I’m happy to return and see the little blog that could is flourishing

Yes BB I saw it and had read it last night. Perry has never been popular and has always polled badly. The problem is the only time he had a really good opponent there were 4 people on the ballot and he won with 39% of the vote. He’s lousy but lucky that way.

Over the last several weeks, he and Republican lawmakers nationwide have introduced bills addressing firearms, the Second Amendment, and federal power. The bills are a response to President Barack Obama and Democrats’ renewed interest in gun control measures, which itself is a response to the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

At least 20 states have had some kind of firearm-related legislation recently introduced or currently pending: Texas, Utah, Arizona, Alaska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Nebraska, New Mexico, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Iowa, Indiana, and Montana.

The language in the bills differs from state to state (and some states have seen several different bills proposed), as do some of the particulars. But the message and general thrust of the bills are the same: the lawmakers are telling the federal government to back off on guns.

What assholes! Maybe it hasn’t dawned on them yet that people aren’t afraid of the weapons but of the chickenshits carrying them around. I think of them as cowards since they always speak of their fears in justifying the need for the weaponry.

The gun lobby along with their gun fetishists have accomplished what al qaeda failed to do, make Americans constantly afraid. It has to be on your mind all the time, you can’t walk into a movie theater, an office building, a post office, a shopping mall, your kid’s school, or sit at a traffic light, without fearfully scrutinizing every person and every movement. And even then, if the shooter is behind you, you won’t even have time to blink. Thank you so much “freedom lovers”. Boy do I feel free.

The evidence out in the country that the vaunted Republican move toward “moderation” is pretty much limited to various cable green rooms. In the states, the party has fallen Rand over teakettle in a scramble to let its freak flag fly as high and proud as possible. Just for fun, let’s start in Tennessee, where legislators have spared no expense in the battle against the gay underground menace. The author, one Stacey Campfield, is a real warrior in this cause.

This must be read to be believed in that Stacey Campfleld may be the stupidest, most misinformed, human being I’ve ever heard of. I want to know if sewing pink triangles on the kid’s shirts will be next. Yeah, I went Godwin but Tennessee beat me to it.

An assistant district attorney for Kaufman County, Texas, just east of Dallas, was shot multiple times in broad daylight on Thursday morning just before 9 a.m. as he walked from his vehicle into the courthouse.

Police told NBC DFW they are searching for two suspects in a silver Ford Taurus, but they do not know who may have wanted to kill Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, who was connected to many drug and felony cases.
[…]
A local defense attorney and friend to the victim reportedly said that Hasse had recently prosecuted cases involving gangs and white supremacists, indicating the killing may be retaliation.

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